invercloy

News has recently surfaced of a new loco to join the WHR fleet, an ex-Java sugar plantation 0-4-4-0T Jung mallet. A photo is on the WHR news website: http://www.isengard.co.uk/images/JPEGS/Mallet_TH.jpg It's currently at Statfold Barn but it being passed on to the WHR as it's too big for the SBR. Apparently work to restore it is progressing quite well. Many more details on this thread: http://ngrm-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=2655.0 It does require registration to view, but there's a fair amount of detail on the loco.

Looks good, Markus! Apart from the head attire in the last shot, looks like some strange tartan spider!

The full brake is now watertight having had a new roof added and painted. I added a layer of wet tissue paper to allow it to expand before fixing it to stop bubbling when painting. Then it had a coat of paint before going to bed, Humbrol matt white spray, and was assembled today. Apologies for the pretty abysmal photo, must charge the SLR for when it's fully lettered up. I've got some 1 & 2mm gold alphabet transfers on order from Fox to finish it off. The lower sections have had one coat of Mig weathering wash which has dulled it down a little and improved the look of it quite a bit. It will have another coat of this once the transfers have been applied. I'm going to use a VERY light dusting of the powders on the roof to make it less pristinely white.

Thanks very much, I did indeed use a brush, synthetic bristles and citadel colour paints. I guess you could easily apply the same thinking to a standard gauge item of stock, especially light railways, but I don't see why you couldn't do the same for more 'mainline' items. I've now finished the roof, but the tissue paper covering has wrinkled, so i'll have to redo it. I've come across an interesting hint of pre-wetting the tissue to expand it and therefore prevent the wrinkling happening when paint is applied. Will post some photos when it's finished. Have also painted the droplights a colour slightly closer to tan leather which makes a big difference to them.

Yeah, exactly. I've got the glazing in now and it's had a quick coat of MIG weathering wash. I'll fit the roof soon and do the next wash when the transfers are on.

Cheers Jamie, it will indeed be 'sort of maroon' It looks a little drab at the mo, but it's going to have a white roof and gold lettering, so hopefully that will brighten it up a bit. I'm not great at painting, but the period i'm modelling this will be 13 years old (ish), so will be able to be weathered slightly. I know it's in the period when things would have been well cared for, but it would have been battered by salt air on several sections of the line during that time. I'm hoping the MIG powders and wash will hide the 'dodgy' bits of painting...

It's been a while since i've read your thread, the layout has really developed and the presentation is SOOOOO neat and certainly sets it off well. I'll be taking notes from your old posts when I get to the relevant stage with my new layout.

Whilst layout ideas are gestating I thought i'd crack on with the first item of stock for the new layout. All the stock will be much bigger than my previous 009 items as the prototype is closer to 3' gauge than 2' in loading gauge. The first item i decided to build was a full brake coach based on the sides of a Ratio GWR coach kit. I've added plastruct strips to it including the beams beneath the body, the running boards, the bufferbeam, the steps beneath the doors, the entire end panels, window frames, steps, acetylene generator and brake wheel cover. It's now sat with a coat of Halfords red plastic primer drying on it. Final colour will be citadel colour 'scab red'. It runs on bogies from an N gauge Tomix TTTE 'Sodor Mail' van.

Spoonerisms has been rather neglected... hopefully over the winter that can be put right. Here are some photos from my visit to the L&B gala to see Lyd in action this weekend, it's a mightily impressive loco and looks great pulling into Woody Bay! I was disappointed on the day to find out that a ride behind Lyd was an extra £5 and it was only running hourly, we arrived fairly early and the first train we could book on was at 16:00!! A much more intensive service could have been operated fairly easily, and could easily have been justified by the visitor numbers. So, we went for a ride to Killington Lane behind Axe and watched Lyd do it's stuff. Unfortunately I missed it arrive at the station up the bank from Killington Lane, but still watching it in the station was impressive enough. 'Sid' was also in action on 'driver for a fiver' duties in the yard, and Axe was pulling the service trains. Axe arrives at Woody Bay Sid in the yard Sid and Heddon Hall in the yard Lyn's cab and wheel pattern on display Lyd on shed Axe leaves to collect its service train Axe en-route to Killington Lane Perchance it doth awaken! Sid and Lyd entering the station I painted that i did! Well, the first coat it had when we restored it when the Somerset Group of the L&B trust was still in existence. I bet it's had at least one more coat since then! Nice to see it being used for it's proper purpose now! Now a few more photos of Lyd that may prove useful for some: Full set of photos here. Here's a video of some of the goings on too...

For those interested i've set up a blog independent of the forum where I will be documenting the progress towards building the layout as well as writing about various other bits and bobs including some of the Scottish prototype lines. Click the image below to visit the blog. I've just finished reading the information gathered from the archives, and have also started a workbench to document construction of the stock for the new layout here.

Sorry, must have missed that one! oops...

Yeah, i guess it's not much deeper than Kylerhea, not so sure about Kyleakin though. Anyway, from looking at Google it seems considerably deeper than where the hotel is. Have you seen the book on the Railways of Skye & Raasay? worrth buying if you are interested. I wouldn't call it Isle Ornsay either, but that was what it was referred to in the plans as, so I'm sticking with it. I prefer it to Duisdale anyway

You made a decent amount of progress towards finishing it! Do you have any more shows booked now?

Sorry, but you've clearly not read my previous post which explains things! The planned line was actually located 1/2 a mile north of Isle Ornsay harbour where the hotel is. The quay there is FAR too shallow for the planned ferry connection, the previous post shows actual survey plans and a map of the line for a station located closer to Duisdale House. You can see what I mean on the image below.

Here's a roughly sketched conceptual layout plan, not to scale and some elements are slightly incorrect but it shows the idea. I'll test out these ideas when I produce a full size plan with track templates. I've drawn the surrounding coastline, road and major topographical elements on to the plan to see how they fit in and it's looking pretty good. The plan is recycled from a previous layout idea. If you click on the image it will take you to a flickr page with notes on it so that you can see the plan labelled up with what all the various elements are. The quay should extend to the edge of the baseboard joint to help mask the joint a little, or to just before and the fishing boat to mask it. I've drawn out the righthand most board full size and it looks like there's enough room in the loop to shunt the quay and not require a headshunt, so the main line will remain clear through to the platforms.

Yes, you do... but it's worth it and there's LOADS of narrow gauge info on there that it's just easier to point interested people towards than to type out all over again!

If you're up for a bit of scratchbuliding (it's easy when you take the plunge) then you might find some inspiration here: http://ngrm-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=970.0

Adam, I have to be honest, at times I found my visit to TNA rather confusing, it was my first time there and it wasn't immensely clear how you go about certain aspects of getting records ordered. Anyway, I got there in the end and was pleasantly surprised by the results! Gary, Skye is also my favourite place on earth, hence the fascination with the plan as soon as I heard about it. The planned gauge was 3'6", however i'm going to be modelling it at 2'6" gauge. This should have lowered the costs quite considerably over a line of that length, an important decision as finances (or the lack of) seems to have been the main reason the scheme wasn't taken forward. It will enable me to model it in 4mm scale on 9mm gauge track (2'3" i know, but it's close enough for me) AKA 009. Markus, I thought you'd find it interesting! I'll be posting details of other parts of the plans in due course as I progress through the layout. Thanks all for your interest.

Having said that I had found no reference to the NBR in the records at Kew I uncovered this today: I think that the NBR being allowed to 'work' and 'use' the line fits in with the concept I had anyway, as well as the opportunities that the statement about rolling stock opens up.

Thanks chaps! I'm intending to model it in 1913 so it will be fairly early after completion of the line (estimated at 1903/4). All stock will be in NBR livery - nothing like a challenge!! I've got some more archive material that i'll show when the time is right.

Some of you will know that I've been contemplating what to do for my next layout for some considerable time now. I was thinking of doing a freelance line set in the West Highlands of Scotland, loosely located 'somewhere in the Lochaber region', however whilst coming up with these plans I came across a few references to a proposed line on the Isle of Skye. A little more digging revealed that there was a survey conducted and that the plans were held in the National Archives at Kew, so today ChrisM and I took a trip to have a look at them and see what could be uncovered. The intention was to identify sections of the plans that could make potential layouts. All images below are reproduced with permission. We weren't anticipating finding much, but when collecting the first lot of records this is what we were presented with: When unfurled this revealed a wealth of plans and long sections of the line including details of bridges, viaducts, and tunnels. You'll have to excuse the weights on the end of the sheets in some shots, it was a constant battle to stop the sheets curling back up again! It all looked like it had'nt seen the light of day for some considerable time. Here's an overview map of the whole system drawn onto an OS map sheet. Railway 1 runs from Isle Ornsay to Uig (52 miles in total), whilst Railway 2 branches off Railway 1 approximately 3 miles North of Portree and runs a further 24 miles to Dunvegan. I've chosen to model Isle Ornsay station as it closely fits the plan for the freelance layout I drew up a while ago, conveniently ChrisM also found a perfect site for a layout for him to build too, but I'll let him tell that side of things when he's ready. The sheet that shows the section of line I'm going to model is shown below: More specifically the area immediately around Isle Ornsay station and pier: As can be seen from the long section, the line was planned to pass through a headland in an 80 yard long tunnel - an ideal break for a fiddle yard! Below is a general description of Railway 1 for it's entire length. Notice to build the line under an order from the 1896 Light Railways Act in the form of an advert placed in the Northern Weekly on Thursday the 21st April 1898. The line was proposed by a group of people from the London area. The directors are listed as being a Mr. Andrew M. Barr of Eltham, Harold E. Lewin also of Eltham, Charles Kemble (unreadable location), A. Hambury Tracey of Queensgate, W.M. Godward of Enfield, J.W. Hume Williams of Gloster Place, and T. Beaumont Hesseltine of Bond Street. Some of the above were part of a well known railway manufacturer who's head office address matches that of the Hebridean Light Railway Co. Dick Kerr feature on a lot of the paperwork and are listed as the promoter and official contractor for the line. I've found several references to this proposal in different books, some mentioned the involvement of the North British Railway, the records don't show this. In one document it is stated that the line wasn't built due to lack of funds and the plan was abandoned. The company correspondence does make reference to them not wanting to immediately dissolve the company as they were keen to try and restart it in the future. To make the model I have made one assumption: When the costs for the line came in at more than expected (£598,977 9s 9d) the HLR approached the NBR to see if they would be interested in a joint project. The NBR agreed and part funded the line as well as agreeing to provide stock, and operate it. The provision of a government grant which the NBR aided the line in obtaining, was a great help towards some of the construction fees. This would have meant that the line was more likely to get built, and to a reasonable standard with some interesting potential for stock. The Highland Railway were approached to build a line on Skye and refused to do so on two occasions, so the NBR was the logical choice for this, especially as they were working on the Mallaig extension to the West Highland Line at the time this scheme was being proposed. Ferries could then have been run from Isle Ornsay to Mallaig to provide a connecting service. The layout will be approximately a 9'x9' L shape, i'll be firming up the trackplan soon after i've made alterations to it to reflect the change in location. Things that will change are mainly the location, type and orientation of buildings as well as a minor re-site of the turntable and the addition of a tunnel mouth as the exit to the fiddle yard. I wil be using some of the details from the National Archives (plus a little imagination) to write a history to accompany the layout. The plans also showed lines proposed across the conjoined islands of Lewis and Harris, namely Railways 3 and 4. I will post some more details of this at some point if people are interested. I've not modelled a real life location before, but the opportunity to do so is something that i'm looking forward to, although the proposed line will allow me to model the area immediately around the station as it could have developed had the line been built.

add brown, not just grey otherwise it will look too blue.